#long post sdkald

[greywindys]

I think I can see your line of thinking, but I'm interested to hear why you think the album is about Murdoc more than it is about 2Doc this time.

Yeah, of course! I want to precede this answer by saying that this is all my fanon interpretation. The inferences I make use canon to support them, but Ed didn't seem to write anything like this into the actual CI story. I'm always open to new perspectives though. What really guided how I listened to CI was this quote, from this interview with Damon:

"It's very easy to suffer from delusions of grandeur in a culture like today's. The messiah complex is very real today, and it's evidently powered by social media. History teaches us how things end for false prophets, the madness that comes with any movement with one of them at the center."

Overall, CI isn't exactly saying anything new. I can name, off the top of my head, quite a few pieces of media that commentate on the same topic, in almost the exact same way. But the concept is, overall, consistent throughout the album, and I feel like I can hear a narrative. I don't like to conjecture too much about Jamie or Damon's artistic viewpoint, I'm not that kind of fan, but the songs seem to show a speaker getting pulled into a belief system, a vice, a ~cult (it's vague) and going through the motions of being a believer(Oil, Silent Running), to being a leader leading others down their same self-destructive path and being consumed by their own Messiah complex (Tarantula), to eventually coming out of it in the end, possibly (Skinny Ape, Possession Island). At the very least, there's an evolution from being the one controlled to the one who abuses their power (or tries to, at least). IRL, this could be Damon grappling with his own "Messiah" role, bestowed upon him by fans.

So why, if Damon is "2D", am I not saying this is about 2D?

The short answer: because none of that has anything to do with 2D. The narrative in the album, imo, is a lot more consistent with the cycle Murdoc's character has been stuck in consistently throughout Gorillaz' entire run. Murdoc is the one who sought out fame, love, recognition, etc, and constantly gets derailed by vice after vice, only to fight through it, but fall into old patterns again not long after. How many times have we played the "is he better this phase or not?" game? Who "suffers from delusions of grandeur'? Who had the Messiah complex this phase? Who has been both hurt by the world, and hurt the ones close to him? Murdoc. The album, to me, plays like an outside narration of Murdoc's journey this phase, and on a wider scale, the cyclical pattern of his life (and the band's).

Murdoc has often been used as the main character to voice the controversial opinions, to carry out the problematic decisions, essentially move the plot along at the expense of his own reputation among the fanbase. So it makes sense for me to think about each CI song in connection to each step of his ongoing, unhealthy patterns (one of which could be his relationship with 2D, hence where we can get the 2Doc reading). "Moonflower" is less of a real character to me than she is a representation of Murdoc's various vices and insecurities. And of course they unite in the end. He's either freeing himself of them, or welcoming them back to him so he can start down the wrong path all over again. Which leads me to my next question...

I'm still going back and forth about the ending of the album. Is it optimistic? Is it depressing? Is the message that we're trapped in our own addictions to social media, belonging, acceptance etc, but hey, at least we're trapped together? Are we Murdoc? Lmao, but I'm also also being somewhat serious.

I can already hear the counter arguments about how it was 2D who "literally fell for the cult," but the thing is, the narrative doesn't fault 2D for that. 2D also never had a Messiah complex, or got sucked into fame the way Murdoc did, and continues to do. All of 2D's flaws have all but been erased these last two phases. Talk about his children he doesn't pay child support for, his addiction to painkillers, his homewrecking, and whatever else, but the fact is that none of those things are acknowledged by the current canon anymore, and the current writers don't treat them as relevant. They might as well not exist, because the writers want him to be 100% "pure." The narrative doesn't portray his relationship with the rival cult as his fault either, it's Murdoc and Moonflower's fault for manipulating him (Moonflower) or being mean pushing him away (Murdoc). As he's currently being written, he doesn't have the range to be the main character on this album, imo. To be frank, there's little to nothing of substance there anymore (part of the reason I don't really respect what his character has become, despite liking him in the past).

I'm actually a little bit irked about the story we got versus the actual substance of the album. Though I typically defend Ed, I feel like he interpreted the concept very literally and gave us a simplified version of Damon's vision. It was a cute story, but compared to the album, it's kind of basic, imo. I think it also illustrates the overall lack of communication between the art, music and writing pieces. You can tell there wasn't a lot of cohesion until late in the phases development, and the cartoon band side of it missed out on a lot.